Telephone interruptions are a nuisance and a necessary evil of everyday business. Often during an important telephone conference or meeting a receptionist is given instructions to hold all calls. However, it frequently happens that a telephone call comes for a person from a caller to whom the receptionist believes the person urgently desires to speak. This often requires an external interruption of the ongoing phone call or meeting with a flurry of arm-waving and facial contortions while the receptionist attempts to get the attention of the person and get his or her message across. This technique, while often amusing, disrupts the telephone conversation and does not give a professional, smooth transfer from an ongoing conversation to the new business at hand. This old system is less than satisfactory and can appear rude or thoughtless to other participants. In contrast, when a person about to enter a meeting or engage in a telephone conference instructs the receptionist to "hold all calls", important calls may be lost: an unanticipated call from a party to whom the person wishes to speak will be cut off as well, for the receptionist has been given no exceptions. Providing an exception list is simply impractical: the receptionist cannot keep track of each person's changing exception list and the persons themselves cannot be expected to create and maintain an ever-changing list of exceptions.